Benefits of President Obama’s Health-care Information System Plan

The benefits of a fully computerized health record system in President Elect Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

President-elect Barack Obama recently spoke at George Mason University on the economy and his plans for it. One of his main promises was that he would take steps to computerize paper health records within a period of five years. This according to Obama would eliminate red tape while minimizing waste, medical errors and the repetition of costly medical tests. This is certainly a good move, but what are the challenges and obstacles faced by this initiative? What are the benefits that would be gained through this venture?

Challenges and obstacles

There are many challenges and obstacles in the way of fully computerizing health-care information systems throughout USA. These are

1] High Costs – According to estimates by Harvard and other organizations, the initiative could cost up to 100 billion dollars over the expected 10 year implementation period.

2] The need for specialized labor and effort – Setting up and maintaining an electronic health records system will be a highly technical task that will require specialized labor and skills. It would require the employment of large numbers of health information technology professionals, who unfortunately are hard to find at the moment. Because of this, many Information Technology professionals will need to be provided with specialized training for employment in the healthcare system.

3] Patient privacy concerns – Patient’s medical records need to be kept private because of their sensitive nature. A computerized health record system raises new challenges to privacy of the records such as hackers and computer failures.

4] HIPAA compliance Issues – Many of the currently existing online health record systems do not comply with HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act], the American health privacy law.

5] The current state of medical records keeping – Only around 17% of physicians and 8% of hospitals utilize computerized health record systems at the moment. The majority still use paper record systems, hence there is much to be done in this regard.

Tremendous benefits

However, tremendous benefits are expected if the above mentioned challenges and concerns are successfully resolved. One of the main objections to Obama’s plan has been its cost. However the healthcare industry spends around $2 trillion every year whereas Obama’s plan would cost $100 billion to implement according to estimates. So it is a small amount when compared with the expected benefits that the move can bring. Moreover the computerization of the health record system can save the healthcare industry up to 300 billion dollars per year according to some expert estimates. Another benefit is that a number of new jobs will be created, as personnel will be needed to implement and maintain a computerized health record keeping system. Some estimates place the amount of jobs generated at up to 212,000. The system will standardize health record keeping and make tracking a patient’s health data across providers easier. There will also be increased savings for every US family as health care costs will be reduced.

So is this initiative a giant leap forward? Or a shot in the dark? Considering the state that the economy is, we need innovative and forward thinking plans even if they involve taking risks or overcoming many challenges. Moreover, the future is digital. Everything we have seen indicates a switch to computerized systems. Why should the system of keeping medical health records be any different? This initiative will certainly increase healthcare quality and reduce healthcare costs if all goes well.

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admin 23 January 2009 Medical electronic medical records, health record, HIPAA, HITECH Act

12 Responses to “Benefits of President Obama’s Health-care Information System Plan”

Kim Diamond says:

July 16, 2009 at 8:43 am

I think its great idea, too many practices dont manage information effectively and lose paper files. We have started implementing technology in our practice for some time now and its making a huge difference. We use range of medical scanning products from a company called CSSN.
ak1980 says:

August 31, 2009 at 11:22 pm

I believe that this was desperately needed, considering the millions of US citizens who are losing out on even basic care due to the shortcomings of the present system.
anubhav says:

August 31, 2009 at 11:25 pm

Considering that nearly 14,000 US citizens lose their health insurance coverage each day simply due to the unaffordability put forth by the present healthcare scenario, making healthcare more organized and affordable is always welcome.
rockport texas says:

November 13, 2009 at 3:05 pm

This was really needed.
Danbury CT Chiropractors says:

December 22, 2009 at 12:54 am

Thanks for this well crafted piece of writing about such an important issue facing us.
Demetrios Perdikis says:

January 8, 2010 at 6:42 am

This is a very good read. A few thoughts since you graciously asked for them. Firstly, the idea of government “efficiency” is paradoxical and strikes me funny. How, say, ten people spending someone else’s money can ever be more efficient than one person spending her own money, and making her own decision on what is best for her is beyond my reckoning given that the former has never been shown before, in any set of circumstances. Secondly, provided that we remain a market economy for the foreseeable future, the “invisible hand” driving any part of it also drives the health care sector to the degree to which health care’s constituent interactions are properly constrained. Any care provider trying to earn a living in the ‘free market’ will tell us that he is over-constrained, indeed most would say they are restrained by burdensome regulations that make caring for people prohibitively difficult. To the extent that the natural market forces revolving around self-interest, and the mechanisms revolving around prices are not contaminated by the visible, concrete hand of well-intended regulators I see the balance of compliance and the pragmatic need for digitization leaning heavily toward adoption. However, the consumers of all things “digital” in medical care will be reluctant at best and adversarial at worst because of the boutique mark-up for any consumable that is labeled “medical”. Lastly, the only idea in your article with which I disagreed is the veil of “savings” that additional expense will somehow bring. While it’s true that spending more for problem prevention in the short term will reduce the lifetime cost of the prevented problem, the health care scenario is a bit different in that the cost of care services in general will not be reduced by the dreamy and presumed efficiency of a larger, more arbitrarily constraining system but because such a system makes the filing of claims, and therefore payments for those same services much easier to reject. So, if we want to call refusal of payment a cost reduction technique I suppose we can be comforted by saving money the existence of which we will never experience.
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January 26, 2010 at 2:14 pm

I agree this is really needed.
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February 1, 2010 at 12:08 am

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